A Better World 2017

Each year our 6th grade students take part in the A Better World Project, an ABCICT global initiative.

During the project, students explore global issues, learn about the UN SDGs and engage in research activities, while fine-tuning their research skills. They learn search strategies, evaluate websites and learn how to take notes.

As the project progresses, the students apply their learning in a variety of creative ways.
They choose one global issue per pair and collaboratively write rap songs. Later, they mix music tracks on the iPads and record themselves singing using Garageband.  They create music videos using singing avatars created in Tellagami, Chatterpix and CrazyTalk,  and also record a few live shots, usually in front of a green screen. All of this footage is finally compiled in student produced, music videos. They use both DoInk's Green Screen App and iMovie on the school iPads to edit and render their videos.

All of this work is uploaded at certain stages,  throughout the process,  to student Google Sites and reflected upon.

The project is now winding down for the year, the plan being to have students finish off their sites and reflect this week.

Here is a preview of two student rap songs that we are quite proud of.

Do check back in a few weeks, to view the final project list for 2017.

Morphing the A Better World Project with Tellegami

During the last round of our A Better World Project, we realised we would need yet another talking avatar generator. While we still used Morfo on a few iPads and gave the kids the option to use Crazy Talk,  we needed an alternative that would serve the needs of some of our students, better than the current apps did.

One of the problems we had encountered is that Crazy Talk, while wonderful, is quite complex and takes a while to learn well. There is nothing wrong with spending that time, but when the weeks go by and it is all about the app as opposed to being all about the creativity, a balance must be found.  We also found that Morfo, on some of our ipads, would no longer allow us to download the videos without paying and this caught us out in the middle of the project. We didn't have a budget to purchase it with.

Another problem which we encountered, was that we had begun to run out of time during the project, and this was becoming a pattern with each new group. We attributed much of this to the extra time devoted to the work with Crazy Talk. It seems that some students really fly with it while others struggle a great deal. We needed another option for those students.

We looked around and discovered Tellegami. This is a free app that is simple to use and effective. Using Tellegami, the work shifts from dedicating a huge amount of time to learning an app to being creative with a simple app. This is exactly what we needed for some of our students.  Not only is it available for iOS, but also be downloaded on Android devices.

I have added a page on the A Better World Project with more information I have found on how to use this lovely little app. I hope you enjoy it. We do!

Here is a short video clip of one of the student projects created with Tellegami.